Man climbing tree plummets 20m when branch snaps

A Canadian man who climbed a tree to jump 20m into water but ended up slamming into a cliff wall when a branch broke has blamed the bone-crunching fall on "liquid courage".

Kyle Ponciaro, 20, from Vancouver, was sent violently tumbling onto rocks and into the Washougal River below after a thin branch he was standing on snapped earlier this week in the US.

A man standing on an adjacent cliff, at Naked Falls, Washington, cupped his mouth in shock as his flailing friend bounced off the wall before crashing head-first into the water.

Mr Ponciano suffered a broken pelvis and a shattered elbow among other injuries.

Speaking from his hospital bed, he said doctors expect him to make a full recovery but said he could easily have drowned were it not for the frantic rescue efforts of his friends.

When pressed by local media what had compelled him to scale so high, Mr Ponciano admitted he had been drinking and wanted to show off.

"I got a little liquid courage in me and felt like I needed to keep going higher and jump from a spot that I had never jumped from before, and then felt the need to go even higher than that," he told KPTV.